Walking Green: Developing an Evidence-base for Nature Prescriptions

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Stress, Attention

In brief

The investigators hypothesize that walking on a nature trail will lead to greater reductions in stress and greater improvements in the capacity to direct attention as compared to walking on a suburban sidewalk. The effects of walking in these different locations will be measured using physiological and psychological outcomes. The study design is a randomized with-in person cross-over trial. Subjects will take six 50-minute walks, one walk per week for six weeks. Three walks will occur in the urban setting and three in the nature setting. The order of the conditions will be randomly assigned to each subject, so that half of the subjects will complete the urban walks first and half the subjects will complete the nature walks first. There will be a two-week washout period between the two sets of walks. Day of the week will be fixed within person, and walks will occur during the mild weather months. In the case of inclement weather, the weekly walk will be skipped and an additional week will be added to the schedule. Limiting the frequency to one walk per week maximizes feasibility of the protocol and minimizes training effects, with any training effects over time being handled primarily by randomization (condition order is balanced), but also in the statistical analysis.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT03442998

Run by

University of Minnesota

People needed

24

Starts

2017-07-14

Expected to finish

2019-04-01

Last updated by the study team

2019-11-01

Who can join

Age: 35 and older, up to 59. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Age 35 to 59
• No contraindications to physical activity
• No major chronic diseases or specific medications that would contraindicate exercise or potentially blunt heart rate variation during exercise

You may not qualify if…

• Cardiovascular disease medication
• Arthritis
• Steroids
• Certain blood pressure medications
• Diabetes
• Cancer
• Self-reported depression or anxiety / taking medication for depression or anxiety,
• Outside age range
• Inability to follow schedule including travel to arboretum
• Exceeding physical activity recommendations (250 minutes per week)
• Contraindications to walking

Where it is running

• Minnesota Landscape Arboretum — Chaska, Minnesota, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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